


Blue and Yellow

by 13thSyndicate



Category: Akatsuki no Yona | Yona of the Dawn
Genre: Ao the Squirrel - Freeform, Chapter 100+ Spoilers, Comfort, Emotional Hurt, Friendship, Gen, Not sure?, Seiryuu Abi - Freeform, Shin-ah is a good listener, Shin-ah listens, Shin-ah's eyes, Shin-ah's mask, Shin-ah's therapy squirrel, Zeno talks to Shin-ah about things he doesn't tell anyone else, Zeno's guilt, Zeno's past, but not really hurt/comfort?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-14
Updated: 2017-06-14
Packaged: 2018-11-13 22:56:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11195205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/13thSyndicate/pseuds/13thSyndicate
Summary: " “Do you want to hear about him? Zeno… feels like talking tonight.”I nod. Kija tells the most stories, but Zeno tells the best."Zeno talks to Shin-ah about the past, because sometimes the past weighs too heavily on Zeno. Shin-ah listens, like always.





	Blue and Yellow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ZenoObsessed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZenoObsessed/gifts).



The stars are bright tonight.

The stars are bright, the moon is full, and wind comes down from the mountains and brings the cool, chill air of springtime with it, tasting of snow and hidden lakes and pine needles even though we’re camping in the green, green meadows of a valley, miles from any of those things.

If I looked, I could see them, I think. The mask obscures but if I just lift it, just a little, just enough, I can see stars that don’t exist, a town on the horizon…. Snow on the mountaintops. Deer are grazing up there and if I look, farther, farther, harder, the stone falls away and I can see the darkness sleeping at their hearts.

I reach for the mask, and hesitate. The monster lives in my eyes, too, but for once…. Just once…

I have to blink, as wind stings my eyes for just a moment. Air always feels strange on my face, cool, dry, a biting sensation everywhere above my nose. I breathe in…. out… I look up at the mountains to esee, the snow, the deer… my eyes are getting stronger.

There’s a sound behind me and I turn, slamming the mask back down on my face… but it’s only Zeno. My shoulders relax. He bounds towards me, careless and carefree, or at least he seems that way – but his movements are careful and measured in their carelessness.

“Looking?” he asks, and I nod, and he smiles and collapses gently-heavily onto the ground, robes folding around him. He pats the ground next to him and I find myself sitting. Ao pokes her head out of my clothing and scampers over to him – he shows her a nut that I could see bulging slightly against his pocket. I can’t quite follow the movement that gets it from the pocket to his hand, but I don’t look very hard. Zeno likes surprising people. Looking too hard always ruins a surprise.

When it’s Zeno, when it’s Yona, when it’s the other dragons, I like the feeling of being surprised. It’s a happy feeling that blooms in my chest as Yona holds out flowers and Zeno does his tricks… when Jae-ha hides and pretends he doesn’t care but really looks out for the rest of us.

“He liked to look too, a long time ago.”  
  
Zeno is also looking, but he’s looking at the stars. I wonder, for a moment, who ‘he’ is and then I remember. The expression on Zeno’s face crinkles in his eyes a little, furrows in his brows a little. His mouth sets a little thinner and the orner of his lip, as he smiles, trembles in ways no one else can see. He is remembering, tonight, I think – I can always tell, could always tell, when Zeno is or was remembering. Ao remembered, too, but Zeno remembers more, a lot more. (Jae-ha remembers, also, and Hak, and Yona… Kija doesn’t remember, but Kija almost looks like he does when he can tell the others are). Zeno remembers more than everyone. Now I know why.

I sit patiently, watching him. I don’t like talking – it feels strange after going for so long without anyone to speak to but Ao. And it seems to help Zeno, and the others, to have someone quiet to listen to. I can be like Ao, a blank space to pour out remembering until it doesn’t feel so heavy anymore.

Zeno looks at me, and he smiles, a smile that doesn’t tremble, that doesn’t furrow, just one that crinkles at the edges and pulls his lips wide. His eyes are half-closed, soft and gentle. He reaches out and pats my knee and I try to smile back at him, a little – it tugs at my own corners and feels strange. 

“Do you want to hear about him? Zeno… feels like talking tonight.”

I nod. Kija tells the most stories, but Zeno tells the best. I settle in and listen as Ao crawls back to my lap. She buries her head into my palm like one of the village cats I see, looking for pets or scratches.

Zeno’s eyes are far away.

“A long time ago. Sometimes I wonder really how long it was…” Zeno’s ‘I’ doesn’t fit in his mouth quite right – it’s shaped wrong. “His name was Abi. He was the first Seiryuu to wear a mask… he was the first Seiryuu at all.”  
  
He talks with his hands. He talks about the first time he met Abi, younger than him, a person younger than me. He talks about Abi’s amazing eyes, how he was always watching for danger, how he loved to look at the sky and the mountains and the sea.

“Zeno wishes you could have known him. He was not much like you, Zeno doesn’t think… but in the important ways, he was very much like you.” Zeno smiles at me again, comparing, and I wonder if when he looks at my face, sometimes, he sees someone else. “He was fiery and spirited and thinking about him reminds me a lot of the lad, sometimes, with his temper and how he talked to the other dragons… he disrespected our King and told others not to disrespect him on the same breath, and he was loyal and proud and kind to animals and even people when no one was around to see.” He drops his eyes to the ground and runs his fingers through blades of grass.  
  
“Can you see how each blade of grass is made up of tiny threads? It’s like a single leaf with veins like ours.” I nod, and he stares down at the grass in his hands. “Abi told me that,” he says softly. “He knew so many things. He never talked to Guen, and Shuten was never interested… but I liked learning, so he would talk to me.” He chuckles. “Just like Zeno is talking to you, yes, yes?”

I wait, tilting my head, looking at him from behind the mask, and he digs his fingers into the soft ground and I wonder what is weighing so much on his heart, because his face is taut and his knuckles are white and I understand that he isn’t simply remembering – isn’t simply talking. He is hurting, and I reach out to mirror his gesture, putting my hand on his knee.

“Yes,” I say softly. “Just like.”

He looks up at me, and his fingers uncurl. They’re stained with earth, and the green that leaks from grass when it is damaged like blood, and an ant slowly crawls across the back of his hand as he pats mine and looks away.

“Abi was a good man,” he says. “He was your ancestor. He was a nobleman, did you know that? The child of an aide to a minor lord who would be king, who swore fealty to Hiryuu. He wasn’t even supposed to be there – when Hiryuu was to be killed, Abi was not supposed to be among the crowd. When the dragons came down to us, no one was more shocked than Abi when Seiryuu landed in front of him.”  
  
He chuckles, and the chuckle is sad.

“Shin-ah,” he says, and I start, because there is only once that I have ever heard him say my name, “Shin-ah, you have his face. Not just his eyes and hair and the things the dragon gave, but his face. You’re taller, stronger… you have more muscle. Abi was small and petite and dainty like the lad because of a live he lived in luxury. If you – and he – had never become dragons, maybe you might be too.”

His hand clenches white into brown earth again.

“When… when I learned there were dragons after us… I thought to myself… ‘they are strong, like us. They exist because Hiryuu will come back. I won’t have to be alone anymore.’ But…” He shakes his head, and I watch his brow furrow so deep that the lines look like they might hurt. “But I didn’t go to them. I didn’t want to see them. I said, ‘Zeno, they don’t need you,’ and ‘Zeno, look how much you failed Abi and Guen and Shuten’. And I…. did nothing.”

He looks at his hands.

“Abi’s descendants should have lived like kings,” he says, very softly. “If I had… if even once I had…”

And I understand, so suddenly. I remember Jae-ha’s anger as he learned that Zeno had met him, as a child, and done noting. I remember the flash of yellow – Ao, that’s a yellow dragon – and I can still feel it on my skin, the warm light that Yona speaks of when she speaks about Zeno. He is hurting – he _is_ hurting – and I wish I knew the words to say. Ao never said much when I was hurting – ‘get up, boy’, ‘deal with it’, ‘this is what a monster is’, ‘this is something you have to overcome’ – but I know his words won’t help Zeno now. All I can think of is to gently remove Ao from her perch and gently, oh-so-gently, take Zeno’s hands, his fingers which have dug so hard into dirt and clay that there are flecks of red mixed with the brown of soil-stains and the green of the grass’ blood, and wrap them around her.

“You are here, now,” I say.

Zeno looks at me, looks at me with eyes wide in surprise, the good kind with the warm feeling that wants to pour out of your chest. His mouth is slightly open; his tongue is dry, I see him swallow as he closes his mouth. He closes his eyes and looks down in a slow blink, to calm his nerves. His eyes are wet – there are tears he is not shedding pooling at the corners, though I know he will not let them spill out. He tickles Ao’s stomach, Ao, who doesn’t understand, who only seems to know that he is sad as she gazes up at him with large eyes full of trust, and I see a smile pull at the corners of his mouth, a smile he seems surprised and grateful to feel.

“Zeno is,” he says. “Zeno is here, now.”

Hesitantly, because it feels wrong, but because I know it is the right thing to do, I slide the mask off my face. My eyes look at him, unguarded, because I know the monster in me cannot harm the monster in him.

Again, he sseems startled, though not as much. He puts a free hand, removed from Ao’s belly, on the smooth surface of the mask, his fingers finding the long, hairline scratch across the inside that I always wonder how it was made, and nods.

“Thank you, Seiryuu,” he says. “Thank you for showing me  again.”

He seems to mean my eyes, but I’m not sure. Zeno never has one meaning to anything he says, or almost never. He tries to be simple, but he never is. Whatever he means, I don’t mind – the thank you is genuine, it is kind, he means it as he slowly returns to stroking Ao’s fur, her soft belly and tail comforting him like they used to comfort me.

We sit there, under the stars, under the moon, until the dawn comes. When Yona and Hak and Kija and Jae-ha come looking for us, Zeno is asleep, his head on my shoulder, and so is Ao, curled on his shoulder with his hair for a pillow, but I am still awake.

I greet the dawn, and the Dawn, with the knowledge that maybe, just a little bit, I could help.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for a friend who needed a bit of a pick-me-up; she wanted some Shin-ah and Zeno bromance and I wanted to write some Shin-ah and Zeno bromance so it worked out.
> 
> You could read this as romantic if you wanted. I didn't intend it that way, but I'm not gonna judge.


End file.
